


definitions of humanity

by dangeropolis



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, pike as an emt, very frank depictions of death and dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 01:57:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11499363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangeropolis/pseuds/dangeropolis
Summary: Sometimes, everything is shitty, and terrible, really terrible, and irredeemable enough that you just have to cry until there aren't any tears left.Is it weird that you want Scanlan Shorthalt to be there when that happens?Pike works as an EMT on a particularly rough shift.





	definitions of humanity

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys, your author here. usually i have the persona in these notes as a chill disembodied voice chillin' (see, look at me type in lower-case like an uncaring yet cool narrator) but i need to get real with y'all for a quick sec.
> 
> this fic has very graphic and frank descriptions of dying. it doesn't get too existential, and it's over fast, but it certainly can get real uncomfy real quick. if you wanna skip over that, i completely understand, all you have to to do is stop reading at "The victim is still alive, barely," and start again at "After that everything was a blur of people." i bolded it for you to make it easier. thank you for understanding, and i hope you enjoy.

It’s been a rough day.

Pike holds her head in her hands, realizing that yes, it’s been a rough _day,_ as in, the sun is currently  peaking over the horizon and flooding the downtown streets with morning light after almost (almost) twenty-four hours on the job. She started her shift as a paramedic around 7am yesterday, responding to dozens of calls about heart attacks, seizures, and even delivering a baby in the back of an Uber (much to the driver’s horror). It was nonstop pummeling of emergencies when the hospital was already severely understaffed and the threat of cut wages always loomed above their heads. It was now five in the morning the next day, and she was only now taking her first breaths of a break.

Kash, her partner, looks exhausted as well, clutching the steering wheel of the ambulance with a death grip, and the dark circles under his eyes growing by the minute. They started out the night jovially, both hoping for something easy after a particularly brutal week, but now they were stone silent, feeling the lack of sleep draw down their body in agonizing beats. Pike blinks, her eyes as heavy as bricks tied to her feet.

“Well, wanna get breakfast?” Kash asks slowly, glancing at his watch. Their ambulance was parked on a side street for now, since they weren’t even sure they would have time to go back to the station at this point in their shift.

Pike’s stomach gurgles. When was that power bar she hurriedly chomped down on? At breakfast, yesterday, her stomach grimly reminded her. “Pancakes sounds really good,” she admits.

“You know what else sounds good?” Kash says, starting up the van again. “Not doing this fucking job.”

Pike could only hum in sympathy, staring out the window. “How’s Zee doing?” she asks him while they had these brief moments of relaxation.

Kash instantly brightens, as he always did when his fiancée Zahra was mentioned. “As amazing as ever,” he says with a stark lack of the irony that was usually peppered in his words. “How about you, how’s your…whatever he is?”

Pike opened her mouth, maybe to respond, maybe to even clarify the “whatever” part of the question, though she’s not sure she could, but she was saved by the bell of their radio crackling to life.

Car accident. Busy intersection. Initial calls report at least two vehicles involved, no report on any fatalities as of yet.  

Kash lets out a string of colorful expletives, running a hand through his long hair. “Raincheck on those pancakes,” he says, flipping on the siren.

Since they weren’t too far away, Pike and Kash are the first to arrive on the scene. It’s a mess, it’s always a mess, with shattered glass everywhere and a crushed-can motorcycle thrown across the road. Another car sits off to the side, the windows collapsed and the bumper a little smashed, but otherwise untouched. A small crowd of morning-commuters is gathered around, moths drawn to a disaster.

“Move!” Kash barks, hopping out and parting the crowd almost biblically. Pike’s close behind him, thankful for her partner’s authoritative presence. He’s already crouched over the body, checking vitals as Pike flanks the other side.

 **The victim is still alive** , barely, a young man probably in his late teens (oh god) staring up at the sunrise.

It only takes one look for Pike to know that this man is going to die.

The car had probably hit the motorcycle from the side, flinging the man across the intersection. The impact must have been severe, since he was bleeding out quickly and from even the barest of once-overs an EMT could tell that the internal bleeding was probably worst, with most of his organs most likely failing. This man had seconds left.

A shared glance with Kash meant that he thought the same.

“Am I-“ the man below coughed, blood spilling from his mouth. “Am I gonna die?” His eyes are green, shining in the morning sun, wet with tears and blood.

Pike took his hand, squeezed it. Inhaled. Took the pendant around her neck, the one that her grandfather had given her at birth, and squeezed that too.

“Yes,” she says. Maybe her voice chokes at the confession, maybe she stays calm, she doesn’t know. She sees Kash look up from his work, weighing her to the ground at this moment.

The man, she wishes she knew his name, this young man only nods weakly. He lets out a breath, maybe of acceptance.

“Okay,” he says, a universe collapsing around him. “Okay.”

And she watches as he does.

 **After that everything was a blur of people**. Secondary EMTs, coronary reports, police reports. Time of death, 5:36 a.m. He was on his way to a shift at a breakfast diner. The name on his wallet said Steven. She repeated it to herself like a prayer. Steven steven stevenstevensteven. She repeats it to herself as Kash is talking to a different paramedic, his words short and steady, never wasting a breath. He never justifies anything, Pike notices. He doesn’t see the way people look at him for answers in moment of their life’s desperation, in their greatest seconds of panic. He just breaks through, and does his job.

She envies him for that.

After an hour or so of cleanup, they are back in the ambulance, their shift over. Pike is usually rational, but she feels fear climb up her throat. Kash stays so silent that she wonders if he’s judging her.

“If you say no, they panic,” Pike says, apropos of nothing. “If I tell them no, they aren’t gonna die, they freak out.” She holds her head in her hands. “They know when I’m lying.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Pike,” Kash says firmly.

Pike looks out the window at all of the people waking up and walking their dogs and making coffee and kissing their loved ones goodbye for work. Steven steven steven. She fiddles with the pendant again.

 

_Keyleth is spraying the new Spring inventory in her flower shop with a water mister, taking extra time with the stubborn lilies in the front window. Pike is watching her friend, sipping on coffee after getting off of a pretty mild shift._

 

_“I just don’t get it, Pike,” Keyleth says, holding a petal as she inspects it. “Why you believe so stubbornly in a higher power.”_

 

_Pike’s fiddling with her pendant, the one from her grandfather, the one depicting a goddess of light. “I dunno,” she confesses with a shrug. “I’ve just seen a lot of miracles.”_

 

_“But it’s not a miracle!” Keyleth exclaims, throwing her arms in the air and walking behind the counter again. “It’s medicine, it’s skill, it’s hard work.”_

 

_“Why can’t that be a miracle?”_

 

_“Pike.” Keyleth leans against the counter. “You bring people from the brink of death. You save them from the unsaveable. If there is a goddess, it’s you. It’s always been you.”_

 

The words ring through Pike’s ears as they pull into the station, words that twist in her stomach as death is fresh on her fingers. Do goddesses’ have to scrub extra hard underneath their fingernails to get someone else’s blood out? Do they hold the sounds of flattening heartbeats in their head just before they go to sleep? Are their iPhone 6’s also filled with picture messages of other people’s weird lumps with the accompanying caption: “should i b concerned????”

Pike’s looked at so many of her friend Grog’s weird pimples, bruises, and ingrown hairs that she could draw a map of his body without even looking. Yes, even the dick.

Pike changes into her regular clothes, lets her hair loose, feels her phone buzzing in her pocket. The ringtone of _Eye of the Tiger_ is loud enough to wake up the morning crew a little more as they’re preparing the rig. She smiles sheepishly at them before answering.

“Hey, Scanlan,” she answers.

“Pikey-poo!” he returns with more enthusiasm. “I figured you were just getting off work!”

“Yeah,” she says, pressing her shoulder to her ear as she fiddles for her keys. In the distance, Kash waves goodbye to her with a weary salute. She gives a nod and a half-hearted smile back. “My last twenty-four for a few days. Why, did you just wake up?”

Scanlan barks out a dry laugh. “You’re funny. No, I haven’t been sleeping much. My last set ended around four and I’ve just been reading since I got home.” He pauses with a sigh, sounding tired. “How was work?”

“It was…” Pike pauses. Miserable. Horrible. Soul-draining. “Okay,” she says, but her voice cracks. She’s in the parking lot now, a morning chill spreading through her. “It was okay,” she repeats, but her voice doesn’t match, it’s strained and dragged out like the birds cawing to eachother in the parking lot.

“Pike,” Scanlan says, voice laced with worry. “What happened?”

Pike shakes her head even though he can’t see. “Nothing, I’m fine.” As she says it, a few tears she didn’t know she had roll down her cheeks and she quickly wipes them away.

Another pause. “Do you want to come over?”

“What? No, it’s late, well, early, and I don’t want to bother you, and I’m all smelly and sweaty and-“

“Pike, come over. It’s okay.”

She reaches her motorcycle tucked in the corner of the lot and clutches the keys in the hand. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll um, be over soon.”

“Can’t wait.”

Pike hangs up the phone, tucks it into the sleeve pocket of her jacket. She puts on her helmet, thinks of young Steven who would have died instantly if he hadn’t been wearing the helmet.

 _Maybe that would have been better_ , she thinks distantly but shakes it away. Her friends always asked her why she still rode one when she saw so much death come from it, but she can’t ever explain it, even as she revs up the engine.

Vax had thought it was a great idea, helped her go to dealerships and test drive, helped her fix it up when it broke down, sometimes rode on the back of it with her. Although they have their differences, she always thought Vax and she had the similarity of never being afraid of a little danger.

The city was a little more crowded in the later morning, with traffic congested up the main streets. Pike sat in traffic, watching people in their cars browse their phones or fix their makeup.

She passed through the intersection where a man died in her arms only an hour before. It was cleaned up by now, with dogwalkers and commuters breathing the same air that someone had stopped breathing within the same morning. Pike flexes her hands on her handles, sucking in her breath.

Sometimes it isn’t this hard. Sometimes she saw horrible accidents and brutal murders and then went home and watched _Law and Order: SVU_ with rapt attention. She didn’t know what was different today, sometimes it just creeps up on her expectantly.

It keeps creeping up even as she parks outside of Scanlan’s apartment building. She always liked his place more than hers, his had more charm with ivy covered walls and bike racks outside. A perfect place for a dreamer musician with a bright smile, not a place for a dingy EMT with exhaustion digging in her skin. She wonders where Steven lived, maybe a place like this.

Maybe he lived with his parents, she thinks as she presses the elevator button for Scanlan’s floor. Maybe he was saving up for something big, something better, she thinks as she uses the key that Scanlan gave her to open his door.

“Pike? Is that you?” comes Scanlan’s voice from the kitchen as Pike steps inside.

It smells like pancakes.

That’s when she breaks down.

“Pike?”

It comes all at once. Sobs sweep over her in heaves down her entire body. She buries her head in her arms, curls into a crumple on the floor, keys and bag tosses aside. She’s shaking, shaking as she can’t stop crying, tears painting her face as she can’t hold it down anymore.

“Oh god, Pike, I’m here, don’t worry.” Arms wrap around her, pull her in. “Pike, what happened?”

She can’t even speak; every time she tries to she just chokes out another sob. She’s held it in for the past day, kept a calm composure through life and death. But on the hardwood floors of Scanlan’s foyer, the smell of pancakes wafting through the air and a playlist of smooth but upbeat jazz playing throughout the apartment, she can’t even hold it in for a second.

Scanlan holds her, runs his hand through her platinum hair. He lets her cry into his neck, humming in her ear to calm her. “It’s okay, you’re safe, you’re here, you’re okay.” He presses a soft kiss to her temple, another one on the top of her head. “I’m here for you.”

“It’s too much,” she chokes out through the deep breaths, clutching him tightly as though he’s her only tether to the Earth. “I can’t, I can’t-“

“You don’t have to tell me,” Scanlan assures her, petting her hair again. “I believe you.”

She takes a few more deep shuddering breaths, trying to realign herself.

“Here, I’ll name good things to calm you down,” Scanlan says, rocking her back and forth a little. “Booze, barfights.” Pike lets out a stuttered laugh into his shoulder. “A really good guitar solo, Keyleth’s flower shop when everything’s in bloom, the taste of freshly made bread, when Vex winks at you after you say something funny, the concept of a puppy.” He pauses. “My penis, that’s a pretty good thing.”

Pike gives him a soft punch to the arm, pulling away slightly and rolling her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Hey, there she is,” Scanlan murmurs, leaning in to kiss her tear-red cheeks before just rubbing her arms up and down in soothing motions. “You doing okay?”

“No,” she admits with another short laugh. As the tears blink away, she looks at Scanlan for the first time. He looks tired, with dark ringed eyes and messy hair loose from his regular ponytail. She doesn’t even want to know what she looks like right now.

“Can you stand?” he asks, and she nods mutely. He stands, barely even an inch taller than her already short stature, and takes her hands to pull her up with him.

He leads her towards the bathroom, hand in hand, leaving all her stuff on the floor.

The bathroom is bright when they enter, and she has to blink rapidly to adjust to it. Scanlan lets go of her hand to turn on the bath, warm water gushing from the faucets. Pike leans against the counter, feeling small and helpless.

She tries not to think about what this means. They’ve only been, whatever they are, for a month or so now, and even that’s been confusing. Maybe she shouldn’t dump all of this on him now, scare him away. Even though they’ve been friends for close to four years. Even though she’s pretty sure they’re both scared, of all of it. Scared of trusting. Scared of being human.

“I can hear your thoughts from here, Pike,” Scanlan says with an amused grin. “Stop thinking so loud.”

“Shut up,” she says good naturedly, and Scanlan only grins wider in response. He dips his hand in the water, testing the temperature.

“C’mere,” he says, and she walks over to him, still shaking from the lingering panic earlier. He tugs at her jacket, pulls off the shirt that’s covered in tears and sweat. She unclasps her bra herself as he wipes more tears from her eyes. They kiss while she’s unbuttoning her pants, pulling them down with her underwear.

He pulls away from her and steadies her as she enters the tub. The water is warm as it creeps up her body, pleasant enough to let her eyes flutter shut and allowing her to sink further in. Scanlan, the odd man he is, must have had bubble bath solution lying around, since there were mountains of fluffy bubbles pooling around her skin.

“Good temperature? Not too hot, not too cold?” Scanlan asks, taking a rinse bowl and filling it with water.

Pike just nods, sniffing slightly from lingering tears. Scanlan slowly pours water down her hair and neck, soaking it through. “I must look like a fucking wreck,” Pike says with a forced laugh, a little humiliated.

“Well, I’m not going to ask about the various dried blood spots,” Scanlan starts, running his fingers through her wet hair. “I think those are just a part of you by now.”

“Like how you always smell sort of like cigarette smoke.”

“I want it on record that I quit two years ago because you kept nagging me. It’s just the bars I play in,” Scanlan protests.

“I know,” Pike says, a small smile creeping on her face. “I trust you.”

She can hear the sound of Scanlan opening a shampoo bottle and squirting its contents into his palm. As he kneads it into her hair, she’s overwhelmed by the scent of him. It must be the shampoo he uses regularly. She breathes it in, sinking lower. Pike always liked how Scanlan always smelled like a musky bar, cigarette smoke with copper, but when you got close you could get a hint of berries. Anxiety bites at her insides again as she thinks about how dirty her hair must be; full of sweat and grime. She usually doesn’t mind, it’s part of her job, but making someone else deal with it, with her problems, always leaves her with a lump in her throat.

She distracts herself by saying, “I delivered a baby today.”

“Oh?” Scanlan asks, grabbing a comb somewhere and running it through her hair, one part at a time. He makes a face. “Was it gross?”

Pike laughs. “I mean, yeah, but that’s the beauty of it.”

“Being gross?”

“Kind of. You’re gross when you come into the world, but who cares, you’re _alive._ ”

“But doesn’t that get old?” Scanlan asks, still working diligently through her tangles and tears. “You see babies born all the time.”

Pike shakes her head, despite the comb in it. “No. It’s a miracle every single time.” She laughs again, wiping bubbles from her cheek. “Sometimes it’s a miracle that it even works. The first time I delivered a baby was on a ship in the middle of this really terrible storm. I thought the baby would pop out then roll off the deck.”

Scanlan hums distantly, thinking. “I wish I was there for when Kaylie was born.”

Pike reaches up, takes his hand, squeezes. “You’re here now.”

He doesn’t respond, just continues massaging at her scalp, and Pike runs her fingertips over the water’s surface, letting bubbles pucker to her skin.

“Thank you,” she says softly, only above a whisper. “Thank you for everything.”

“Don’t even mention it. You’re pulling yourself into bits helping everyone else out, I thought I’d return the favor for once.” Scanlan tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Besides, even if you weren’t sad, I would have wanted to have a nice breakfast with you before passing the fuck out together.”

Pike sniffs the air. “Breakfast? Is that why I smell burning?”

Scanlan sniffs, too, his eyes growing wide. “Oh, shit!” he yelps, scrambling out of the bathroom. “My pancakes!”

Pike chuckles loudly, rinsing out her hair as she hears various pots and pans clanging about in the other room. “You didn’t turn off the stove?” she asks loudly, standing up in the bath and pulling the drain.

“I put the heat on low! I thought it would be okay!” Scanlan yells from the other room, more plates being shuffled around. “This is why I need a servant!”

“Maybe someday!” she shouts back, still laughing, and grabs a towel from his rack. “Should I call the fire department? I know a guy.”

“Do _not_ call Grog, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Pike wanders out of the bathroom, tucking her hair into a towel wrapped around her head. There’s only a little bit amount of smoke coming from the kitchen, so she steers clear.

“Can I borrow a shirt? It’s a little chilly in here,” Pike asks, heading towards the bedroom.

“Me casa es su casa!” Scanlan shouts from the kitchen.

“Your Spanish is terrible!” She rifles through his drawers, and pulls out an old concert tour t-shirt from a few years back. It’s a little oversized, even for Scanlan, so it hangs around her knees.

“Looks good,” Scanlan says, appearing in the doorway with two plates. “Definitely not like you’re fresh out of a panic attack or anything. Very Marilyn Monroe.”

Pike snorts. “Thanks. Did you salvage anything from the remains?”

Scanlan sighs at the two plates in his hands. “Well, the pancakes were ruined.”

“Man, the universe just really doesn’t want me to have pancakes today.”

“But! I already cooked the eggs before you arrived, so they’re just a little cold. And I popped some strips of bacon in the microwave, too.” He looks up at her, a little embarrassed. “Sorry that it’s a little lame.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” She grabs a plate and kisses his cheek. “Thank you, Scanlan.”

They eat their bacon and eggs on Scanlan’s bed, the sun reaching almost ten in the morning. They both were tired, but full and satisfied. The apartment was small but cozy, seeming smaller as they rinsed dishes and lied down in bed together, closing the curtains from the sun.

“Really, though,” Pike says firmly, staring into his eyes as they face eachother. “I’m sorry about, this. About me. This usually doesn’t happen.”

Scanlan frowns, takes her hand, links their pinkies together. “You’re a person, Pike. This happens to people. It’s okay to admit humanity.”

“I feel the pressure to be more, sometimes,” she admits, looking away. “I know, I know, that sounds stupid, arrogant, I take it back-“

He kisses at her cheeks, her forehead, her nose. “People will want you to be more, because you are more. You’re the most I’ve ever seen.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“It doesn’t have to. Sometimes people are just people, and whatever you define that is can differ. You’re a lot of things to different people. You’re the most because you’re a fighter, a savior, you’re really good at brawls and pool, you listen to the same four albums since 2009, you’re a daughter, a friend, a-“

“-a girlfriend?” Pike finishes, a smile creeping on her face.

Scanlan quirks an eyebrow. “Who’s girlfriend?” he asks slyly, his smile matching hers.

“Yours, dummy.”

“Mine?”

“And mine. My boyfriend.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it is.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They laugh, because they’re too old to be nervous about things like this, they’re too young to care about the implications. They go to sleep that night (that day, really) as people, people who didn’t have to be anything else.

It was a rough day, but it’s getting better.  

She thinks it might even be okay.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu @ breemo on tumblr for...not writing. it's an art blog, there's no writing. sorry.


End file.
